Page 240 of Steeling Her
I’ve instilled that anxiety in her because I was too selfish to return home. Even putting my anger aside, she suffered the most. “I will be coming back, don’t you worry about that. And maybe some time, I’ll get you to come visit me when you’re a little older so you can fly to me? How does that sound?” I ask her but it doesn’t work. She needs that reassurance, those words. “I promise you, Ellie, I will come back.” I walk over to my youngest yet fragile sister and hug her tight in my arms and lift her up. I hold out a pinky for to her for a pinky swear.
She giggles but does it anyway.
I set her down at her door and walk down the corridor to get to the stairs where my mom is waiting for me with a huge grin on her face.
“He’s waiting for you in the garage,” she says as she kisses me good morning. “Good morning too.” She winks and squeezes my hand. She nods down the hallway towards where her other half is and I leave her to it. Usually, we would sit down for breakfast, but it looks like everything has been put on hold and the table is set for just two now. I walk past the smell of pancakes and head over towards the garage door in the kitchen.
I push it open to reveal my dad staying under the rolled up door of the old Mustang he’s been working on, sticking out slightly more than last night. He peers at me over his left shoulder and stands beside the car.
He’s always been into cars.
I remember when I was a kid, I told him that when I make it pro that I’d buy him any car he wanted.
The naivety of children.
“Hop in.” He nods his head to the other door and slides himself into the driver’s side while I slip into the passenger’s side of the old yet stylish vehicle he calls his pride and joy. I close the door gently behind me as he used to roar at Haley for slamming it when we were younger, particularly any of the good cars he had. He used to yell, “Are you trying to shatter the window?” So, with that in mind, I shut it with enough force to close it but still gentle enough to not get yelled at.
“So, where are you taking me?” I ask. It’s still awkward between us because we’re still angry at each other, yet the air around us isn’t that hostile. I can’t explain it wholly.
All he says is “You’ll see.”
The drive is just forty minutes of us listening to the radio and the noise of passing cars. The car is a convertible, the side windows connected to one another. It has three doors; two to the side and one for the trunk. Very old but very classic.
Not a spec of dirt is on the paint or the leather seats. The odd conversation we have is him telling me all about the new installations he made to the car that was on the edge of going to the scrap yard. He worked on it for years and brought it back to life only recently.
By the sound of it, he has so much pride in the work he did on it, even if he’s holding back.
He parked up at a familiar place to me. One that was bittersweet.
Ole Miss. I haven’t been back here since I graduated. I was glad to be gone from here. I never wanted to come back, but here I am. As soon as the car rolls to a stop, my dad wastes no time in getting out. I begrudgingly follow him.
I stand and watch all the college students pass us by without any notice. “Come on, this way.” My dad grabs my attention again and drags me towards a place that I haven’t been in five long and painful years. The football training grounds.
We walk side by side, hands in our pockets and in pure silence, listening to nothing but our footsteps and stranger’s conversations.
It’s a short walk to get to where we wanted. We arrive outside the stadium where I trained with the team and where we played our home games. The memories of a bustling crowd screaming for us to win occupies my mind. A lot of celebrations and a lot of injuries were made on this field; some of them were career ending ones.
We make our way inside and bypass some people working to maintain the building. We head towards the seats where the fans sit and move down the steps towards the field I once played on. I soak it in and remember all of the times I used to look into this area to find Carter. I would always find her looking back at me like she was searching for me. It was harder for me to find her, but I always managed just fine to find her beauty within the crowd.
He sits in the first row of the stands, closest to the players’ benches and where Coach used to roar at us when we weren’t doing things his way.
I sit next to him, leaving one seat between us.
He spreads his arms out so they’re resting on the back of each of the adjacent seats. He leans back while I lean forward as we both stare out at the green grass lined with numbers and white paint.
I can see that there isn’t anyone training right now, so it’s peaceful. I have never seen the field in this state before. It’s so unfamiliar and strange, yet, beautiful in its own way.
“I don’t know if you remember this, but I took you here to see your very first football game. You had been watching it on the TV and kept begging me to take you to one. I couldn’t get you to go to bed because it’s all you wanted to see. You wanted to see a live game, one in a stadium. A college game was the only one I could bring you to at the time, so I brought you to Ole Miss versus Florida Gaters, right here. You had the itch the entire game, so I signed you up to play the next weekend when you were only four. I left you to make some friends and you liked it. You even got TJ involved. You two were inseparable.” He chuckles like old times. I crane my head around to face him but he continues to stare forward. I haven’t heard him laugh in so long. It’s an unfamiliar sound, yet something about it was comforting.
“You fell more in love with it. The more you watched, the more you wanted to play. You were never afraid to try something new on the field. It made you a better player over time as you knew what style you liked and what you didn’t. I loved watching you get better and better at almost every game you played. You used to get so upset if you weren’t on the field. You used to sit in the corner and sulk when you didn’t get what you wanted.” He turns his head to look back at me. “You’re used to doing things your own way, anyway. I remember you used to run out onto the field when you were told to sit on the bench until it was your turn. You always had a fire lit underneath you. You always had the drive to be the best on that field, and you were—you are. You only ever had football in your sight, and that’s all I ever had for you too. Your mom had your education first, I had your talent. You had both . . . until your last year of college—”
“I’m going to stop you there—”
“Let me speak,” he cuts me off once more. There is a softness in his tone, almost like he is pleading to me for more air time. So, I allow it and motion for him to continue on.
“You were doing so well. Your focus was only on school and football; that was it. Then, at the beginning of your last year, I watched you start to slip. I was terrified you were going to get passed over if you kept playing the way you were. I wanted the scouts to see your true potential, but you weren’t playing at the same level before you met Carter. I know it wasn’t fair to blame her entirely, and I apologize for that—”
“I’m not the one you need to say that to,” I butt in a little too harshly. The topic is very sensitive to me even after five years.
